By Anthony Becker, Executive Editor, a.becker2@genie.com
It's time to grow up folks. If the Amiga isn't dead already with these new problems with Escom just before the deal with VIScorp is to be signed, it will be dead if things continue as they have. The state of the Amiga can be changed. The owners just have to look at what Commodore did right and realistically compare what they are offering to the current competition.
Commodore, long time reviled by Amiga owners due to their lackluster support, did one thing very right. They did the Commodore 64 (C64) right. It wasn't necessarily the best machine on the planet. It's OS was poor, it's BASIC was primitive, it's drive access was slow, and it's expansion was limited. What it did have was color graphics, 3 voice synthesized sound, and 64k RAM. None of the low cost computers and few to none of the high cost computers of the time combined these features in one box as standard.
Meanwhile the price of the C64 was flying south as rapidly as possible. All of these factors were presented to the public on TV and magazine ads. A customer, once lured into the purchase, was greeted with a free issue of a Commodore produced publication to bring them into the "family" and teach the customer more about the machine than could ever be placed into the manual. In every computer store the C64 owner was applauded for his/her smart choice with walls of available software products from a myriad of developers. From left field, Commodore broadsided both IBM and Apple and captured the lions share of the home PC market. With the Amiga, Commodore forgot almost every lesson to be learned from the C64 days.
The Amiga 500 was poised to be the next C64. It was very popular amongst home users who didn't want the lackluster features of the MS-DOS PCs or the high cost of the Macs of the day and its price was steadily falling. Then it was pulled to make room for the Amiga 600 which was slightly better but more expensive and less expandable than the 500 and consequently never caught on. If the 500 had been allowed to take off, it would have been the driving force behind the whole Amiga line. The high-end, so called "big box" Amigas like the 2000 and 3000 would have provided the clear upgrade path for low-end owners looking for more. Meanwhile expanding the capabilities of the high-end machines with money from the high volume sales of 500s would steer the whole product line, the steady trickle of these advancements would keep the low-end machines popular. This was never allowed to happen. It was an easy enough lesson to learn. The C64 sales provided the ability for Commodore to develop the Plus/4, C128, C65 and purchase and develop the Amiga itself. To resurrect the Amiga line as a successful product, Amiga Technologies (AT) must learn this.
Could the current low-end Amiga become the next C64? I don't think so. The Amiga 1200 is simply too dated to do this. The low end Amiga must be upgraded to at least a 50MHz 68030, maybe even a 68040. Also, there is no reason for the 4000 to be sold with a 68040 with the owner then having to replace the processor board to put in the 68060 that should have been there in the first place. With these high end CPUs, all with built in FPUs and MMUs, the OS could finally truly support virtual memory and all software could properly support the 040 and 060 and floating point math. With these advancements, developers could be brought back into the Amiga fold giving us what we need most, software, software, and more software.